You're probably familiar with the 'Safe Harbour' agreement between the EU and the USA. It was set up to protect personal data of EU citizens from being transferred to the US. A public discussion in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) between an EU lawyer and EU Judge revealed that this data protection measure doesn't currently work.

"...spy hubs in the US and UK had, among other things, siphoned off data transfer flows by tapping directly into under sea cable networks."

Bernhard Schima told attorney-general Yves Bot at the European Court of Justice that if he wanted to stop US organisations getting hold of his data:

“You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one”

The ECJ is now being asked to clarify the rules for data transfer. They are under pressure to do so, both from individual appeals from member countries and also the European Parliament who are pushing to scrap Safe Harbour completely.